How To Grow A Giant Pumpkin

How To Grow A Giant Pumpkin FARM HOME Food 33-6-4 Want to grow a 1,725-lb. pumpkin? A great place to start is the Atlantic Giant Genetics Cooperative (AGGC) website. It's a great "how-to" site for anyone interested in growing a garden giant. "The website offers complete information on more than 9,000 giant pumpkins that have been grown," says Mike Nepereny, founder of AGGC. "It focuses on the Atlantic Giant variety, its weight gains and the genetics behind it. It also tracks some qualities such as disease and environmental resistance, color, shape and genetic stability. But the emphasis has always been on weight." Non-members get limited access to the website, but can enter information on the pumpkins they have grown. They can check out the largest pumpkins grown in the past five years and find out where and how they were grown, as well as the parent lines that produced them. Select this year's largest pumpkin, the 1,725-lb. giant grown by Christy Harp of Canfield, Ohio, and the info page says it had four lobes and grew from the primary main vine. It was germinated on April 29th, set out on May 8th, pollinated on June 26th and harvested on October 1st. You can learn what the weather was like during the growing season, see pictures of it, and find out the origin of the seed. Other pages give a genetic record of its ancestors and information on each of them. "Those who pay the $20 member fee have complete access to the database, advanced querying capabilities, reports, graphs, articles, photos and more," says Nepereny. "They can specify favorites and be notified when new data is entered on pumpkins grown or pollinated from a favorite." Nepereny, a software developer by trade, created the website a few years after starting to grow Atlantic Giants himself. Another grower had been tracking the pumpkin's development over the years, but Nepereny realized a database approach was needed to handle the volume of data. Today the AGGC website handles information submitted by more than 300 members worldwide. Entries are limited to pumpkins that are 300 lbs. and larger. Nepereny says the information is invaluable to serious growers. "The site allows them to select seed based on complete information on each pumpkin in the database," he says. "They can explore the genetic hierarchies and examine the offspring those pumpkins have produced." Nepereny adds that the site also makes it easy for growers to store and access their own information as well as view that of others. "Growers are constantly cross-pollinating, hoping to breed a larger pumpkin," says Nepereny. "There is a lot of seed trading that goes on between growers. By putting their data on the site, it makes it visible to others." He hopes to expand the website to help develop some new hybrids. He is also looking for commercial breeders or seed houses that he can collaborate with to create new pumpkin varieties. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Mike Nepereny, Atlantic Giant Genetics Cooperative (webmaster@aggc.org; www.aggc.org).

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